


drowning

by fraternite



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: (brief mention of emotional abuse of an unnamed minor character), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Post-College/Adult Life, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Platonic Relationships, actual med student combeferre, enjolras and courfeyrac aren't doing much better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-25
Updated: 2014-03-25
Packaged: 2018-01-16 22:57:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1364848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fraternite/pseuds/fraternite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The hospital is slowly killing Combeferre through a combination of exhaustion and stress; Enjolras is struggling from disillusionment in his first political job; and Courfeyrac isn't talking about work at all.  </p><p>It's hard to take care of your friends when you need to be rescued, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	drowning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [talefeathers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/talefeathers/gifts).



Enjolras was getting home late and Courfeyrac earlier than usual, and so they ended up at the front door at the same time.

“How was your day?” Courfeyrac asked, hunching his shoulders against the bitter November wind as Enjolras fumbled for keys.

“Okay,” he shrugged.  “Same old same old--forwarding emails and running the copier and typing up official letters that don’t actually say anything.  God, what I wouldn’t give for--”  He broke off suddenly as they entered the apartment, motioning at the couch where Combeferre was sprawled, his glasses askew on his face.  “Shh.”

Courfeyrac nodded silently and shut the door carefully behind him.  They tiptoed through the living room to the kitchen, but Combeferre was already stirring.  He sat up with a groan and rolled his neck, cracking the joints.

“Oh shit,” he muttered, looking up at Enjolras and Courfeyrac.  “What time is it?”

“About six-thirty, I think,” Enjolras said.

Combeferre dropped his head into his hands.  “Fuck,” he groaned.

“What’s wrong?”

“I was supposed to work all that insurance shit out this afternoon.  Now the office is closed, and I’m not going to be off duty during business hours for another five days--no shit, that’s a Sunday, I don’t even know when the next time I can do this will be.  God, I’m such a mess.”

“You’re exhausted, Ferre,” Courfeyrac said.  “You’ve gotten what, seven hours of sleep in the past three days?  You needed your rest.”

“Okay, I’ll just explain that to the police when they come to arrest me for driving without insurance.”

Courfeyrac blinked, taken aback.  “I--I just meant don’t be too hard on yourself over it?”

Combeferre sighed.  “Look, I appreciate the sentiment.  It just--it doesn’t make the problem go away.”  He pushed himself to his feet.  “I’m going to do laundry, get something out of this day.”

“Did you have dinner yet?” Courfeyrac asked.  “I’m starved.”

“No, I got home at three-thirty and sat down to make a phone call and apparently I slept for three fucking hours,” Combeferre growled from the doorway to his room.

“Do we have anything fit to eat?”  Enjolras opened the fridge and answered his own question.  “No.  Want to order--”

“No,” Combeferre said firmly, coming back into the kitchen.  “Some of us don’t make enough to get takeout every night.  In fact, none of us make that much, yourself included.  Unless you want to go back on your father’s allowance?”

“Fine, I’ll cook something,” Enjolras grumbled.  “And when I inevitably ruin it, you won’t be able to complain to me.”

“I’ll cook,” Courfeyrac quickly volunteered.  “Just let me change out of my work clothes.”

“While he’s doing that,” Combeferre suggested, “you could clean up a bit.  Your stuff is all over the living room.”

“That’s for the protest on Saturday!” Enjolras objected.

“That’s fine, just, can you keep it somewhere other than all over our common space?  Put it in your bedroom.”

“Fine,” Enjolras grumbled.  “I thought it wouldn’t be a problem to have it in the living room; it’s not like anybody ever spends time here in the apartment anyway, besides me.”

As Enjolras gathered up the flyers and half-finished cardboard signs, Courfeyrac emerged from his room in an old T-shirt and sweatpants.  “What should I make for dinner?” he asked.

“I don’t care, anything quick.”

“Ferre, what do you want to eat?” Courfeyrac called down the hallway.

“I’ll eat anything.”

Courfeyrac began rummaging around in the cupboards.  “Is pasta okay?” he called out after a minute or two.  “We don’t have sauce but we have like six cans of tomatoes, not really sure why.  Or if you don’t want pasta, I could make grilled cheese.  Only all the cheese we have is Enjolras’s gross cheese from the farmer’s market.”

“Pasta’s _fine_ , Courfeyrac--just make something!” Combeferre snapped, on his way out with the laundry.  “We already said it doesn’t matter.”

As Courfeyrac started dinner, Enjolras sat down at the table and opened his laptop.  “Oh god, thirty new emails,” he groaned.  “What went wrong this time?”

“Sounds like my day,” Courfeyrac said wryly.

Enjolras mumbled a response, already furiously typing out an answer.  Combeferre came back from the laundry room, looked around at the still-cluttered apartment, sighed pointedly, and began sorting through the junk mail on the kitchen table.

“Combeferre, did you get a chance to look over the article draft I sent you?” Enjolras asked.

“When would I have done that?”

“I know you’re busy.  It’s just that it’s due to the newsletter on Friday and you said you wanted to see it before I sent it, and--”

“Look, there’s no way it’s going to happen before Friday, sorry.”

Enjolras sighed.  “God, I miss when we were still in college and had time to do this ABC stuff right.”

Combeferre stopped and glared at Enjolras over the armful of jackets he’d collected from around the apartment.  “Well excuse me for not making one more protest a huge priority, but I’ve got other things going on in my life.  Because, unlike you, I actually have a job that I think is important--”

“What, so my job is useless?  Just because I’m not restarting fat rich guy’s hearts every day, I’m not doing anything important?  I’m sorry I don’t control the entire Democratic party yet, sometimes these things take a little longer than a couple months!”

“ _I_ didn’t say your job was useless.  But you make it clear you think so.  I don’t know why you don’t just quit, then we wouldn’t have to listen to you complain every day about how--”

“Stop it!” Courfeyrac shouted.  He stood there breathing hard for a minute, water dripping from his wooden spoon onto the tile floor.  “I--”  His face crumpled and he ran out of the room.  They heard sobs from the hallway, and then his bedroom door slamming.

Enjolras and Combeferre looked at each other for a moment.  Then Combeferre sank into a chair, burying his face in his hands.  “Fuck,” he muttered.

“Yeah,” Enjolras agreed.

“I’m sorry, I just . . .”

“Me too.”

“I’m so stressed, all the time.  I don’t remember what it’s like to not be in crisis mode.  There’s always something going wrong, somebody about to die, at the hospital, and then I come home and everything’s a mess and it really bothers me but I can’t do anything about it because I have a hundred other responsibilities and I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in six weeks and--god, I’m a mess.  I need to change something, because I don’t _like_ being an asshole to you guys all the time.  I just . . . don’t know how.”

Enjolras sighed.  “Look, I’m sorry too.  I’ve been a jerk and I don’t even have a good excuse, like being stressed out from trying to save people’s lives all day.  I’m spending my days stressing over office drama and deadlines for stupid paperwork and shit that doesn’t even matter.  And worse, support work for political deals and fundraiser dinners for rich guys.  It’s . . . it’s not what I thought I was getting into.”

“I know,” Combeferre said.  “It’s frustrating.  You’ve never been one for slow change from within, so this working your way into the system to get to a position where you can start that slow change--it’s got to be torture for you.  I think you’re making the right choice, and I think it is going to pay off in the end.  But I can see how hard it must be.”

“I hope you’re right.”  Enjolras said, smiling half-heartedly.  “Come on, let’s go talk to Courfeyrac.”

They went up the hallway together and Enjolras knocked on Courfeyrac’s door.  There was no answer besides a stifled sob, so he called out, “Courf, we’re sorry.  Can we come in?”

“Yeah,” came the strangled reply after a long pause.

Courfeyrac was lying on his stomach, his face buried in his pillow.  Combeferre and Enjolras climbed onto the bed, Combeferre sitting at the end with his knees pulled up to his chest, Enjolras next to Courfeyrac’s head.

“We’re sorry,” Enjolras said again.  “It’s been really toxic in here, and that’s a shitty kind of place to come home to every night.  We’ll try to be better.”

Courfeyrac nodded against the pillow.

“Courf . . .” Combeferre said slowly.  “It wasn’t just us, was it?”  He shrugged.  “Something at work?”  A pause, then a nod.

“What happened?”

Courfeyrac rolled over onto his back, looking up at the ceiling.  “One of my kids--one of the first cases I ever got--his mom decided she wanted back in the picture.  This despite completely ignoring the fact that her kid was in care for the first six months after it happened.  She’s a horrible, manipulative person and she’s already screwed up his life so much, but her parental rights haven’t been terminated yet, so we have to let her have visits.

“And I don’t know what she said to him--one of the aides supervised, because I had court for the babies, the twins, and of course it was the aide who doesn’t take any of this seriously and he didn’t pay any attention to what was going on between them--but he seemed really upset when I met with him afterward.  So I’m afraid she said something awful to him.”

Courfeyrac closed his eyes.  “But he wouldn’t talk to me.  He _always_ talks to me; sometimes I’m the only person he will talk to.  So I don’t know, maybe she said something about Children and Youth, trying to turn him against us or something.  And whatever, she can play her little games--but this kid needs to be able to trust _somebody_.  He’s gone through so much crap, and if he doesn’t have anybody he trusts, to be able to tell stuff, he’s not going to be okay.  I mean, he’s almost seventeen, and he has to be a part of the world, and if you think that the whole world is full of horrible people and you can’t trust any of them . . . what are you going to do?”

Enjolras ran his fingers through Courfeyrac’s dark curls.  “That really sucks.  That’s a lot of responsibility riding on you.”

“I can’t _not_ feel responsible,” Courfeyrac said.  “The other caseworkers, the ones who’ve lasted years and years, they keep telling me that the only way to not burn out is to detach yourself from the job at least a little.  That you have to accept that a lot of really shitty stuff has happened to these kids, and that a lot of them won’t really turn out okay, and there’s nothing you can do about it.  But I just can’t help it.”  He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.  “But I don’t want to burn out either, because there’s so much that needs to be done.  I . . . I’m having trouble finding a balance.”

Combeferre laughed softly.  “Aren’t we all?”  He patted Courfeyrac’s leg, the only part of him within reach.  “I’m sorry for not realizing that you were having trouble, too.”

Courfeyrac pushed himself up on his elbows and met Combeferre’s eyes.  “No, it’s not your fault.  I--I guess I don’t know how to bring up negative stuff.”

“Maybe I can give you lessons.  I seem to be too good at complaining about my own problems, when they’re nowhere near as serious as what other people are dealing with.”

“No, Enj, you--”

“I have a job working for one of the most important state senators in the party, someone who probably will be making a move toward congress in the next five years, and who’ll take his staff with him.  People would _kill_ for this job.  And all I can think about is how it isn’t the glorious, dramatic, world-changing political action I dreamed of as a naive kid--it’s dinners and compromises and, you know, real politics the way it’s actually done.  But apparently I can’t adjust to that.  Maybe I’m still that naive kid.”

“Politics is a dirty, depressing game--and you’re one of the most idealistic people I know; it’s no wonder you’re having trouble accepting it,” Combeferre said.  “But you’re also one of the most stubborn people I know.  And if anyone can wade through that much shit just because they believe it’s the right thing to do in the long run, it’s you.”

“I really admire you for taking this job,” Courefyrac added.  “You knew how hard it was going to be to work inside the system when you don’t agree with ninety percent of how the system works, and you knew you’d have to give up a lot to do it.  That wasn’t a kid’s decision.”

Enjolras smiled and squeezed Courfeyrac’s hand; he reached down to the far end of the bed to grab Combeferre’s as well.  “Thanks, guys.  I needed to hear that.”

“Then we need to tell you more often,” Combeferre said.

“Do you think we can salvage the rest of this night?” Enjolras asked.  “We’re all really stressed and unhappy, but maybe we can help each other out.”

“We should probably eat,” Courfeyrac pointed out.  “That’s a good starting place.”

“So I’m told.  And we should clean up the apartment, because Combeferre won’t be able to relax until we do.”

“Thanks.”  Combeferre smiled tiredly.  “And then maybe a movie?”  He looked at Courfeyrac, who beamed.

“Yes, please!”

“I can’t promise I won’t fall asleep.”

“I’m hoping you will--you need it,” Enjolras put in.  “And it’s more cozy that way.”

“We’ll pick something extra boring,” Courfeyrac joked.  “Something romantic.”

“How thoughtful of you.”

“What a mess we are,” Enjolras said, half laughing.  “It’s like the blind leading the blind.”

“Or maybe three drowning men trying to save each other,” Combeferre suggested.

Courfeyrac leaned into Enjolras’s shoulder, his fingers entwined with Combeferre’s.  “Only we’re not going to sink.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, this is sort of based on real-life events. Unfortunately, my friend and I were not as good about working things out as these guys (so this fic is kind of a fix-it fic for my life). We ended up okay in the end though!
> 
> Come say hi on tumblr: takethewatch.tumblr.com.


End file.
